Patrick Caurant planned to retire from cycling after riding in the USA Cycling National Championship races in Pennsylvania this week. He had been named "Best All Around Rider" for competitive cycling in 2005 by the Northern California Cycling Association and had racked up honors throughout the country.

But on July 1, during his final training ride before he was to depart the next day for the championship races, Caurant, 28, of Albany collided with a pickup truck on a road in unincorporated Contra Costa County and suffered major injuries to his head and body. He never regained consciousness and died Saturday at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.

The crash occurred during a weekly ride, called the "House of Pain," that was open to anyone who could keep up. He and another rider, Justin Laue, 22, of Berkeley had reached the end of Collier Canyon Road and turned left onto Highland Road directly into the path of an approaching pickup truck, said California Highway Patrol Officer Steve Creel.

Caurant, who was traveling 20-25 mph, collided head-on with the truck, Creel said. Laue suffered only minor injuries. The accident is under investigation.

Caurant rode with "Team Spine," an amateur road-racing team, for the past few years and had taken a bad fall from his bike in May, suffering a concussion, and was "ready to hang up his cleats," said his father, Michel Caurant of Vallejo.

"He was going to do nationals and then be done," said his sister Christine Caurant of Portland, Ore.

The news of his death hit his teammates hard as well as students at St. Joseph School in Pinole, where he taught math and science to middle school students. Caurant, who had struggled with dyslexia all his life, became a teacher because he was helped so much by his teachers, said Christine Caurant.

"He felt like he wanted to really make a difference with those kids who were learning differently," she said.

In teaching, he didn't just stick to the book or the classroom but encouraged his students to recognize math and science in everything. In February, he took some of his students on a field trip to see the Tour of California cyclists race past Pinole so he could incorporate cycling into his lessons.

"It was always exciting," said former student Garette Schultz, 16, who is now going into 11th grade and says that Caurant was his favorite teacher of all time. "It was the class you would be waiting for all day."

Student Nicole Zelnik, 11, who was in Caurant's classes this year, said Caurant, who bicycled to work, told the students that one person could make a difference and urged them to bicycle to school to conserve oil.

Passionate about teaching, he would give impromptu lessons to everyone, even outside the school, his family said.

Having earned an earth sciences degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1999, he was an avid hiker and loved to examine the geology everywhere he went.

"He would tell everybody about the rock formations, whether they wanted to know or not," Michel Caurant said.

Caurant, a star swimmer at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, began cycling while competing in triathlons and joined his first bike-racing team in 2001.

"He was a very good rider," said Dr. Richard Derby of Tiburon, whose spinal diagnostic practice sponsored Team Spine. "He had the hard work, natural ability and the right body type. He was very well liked."